Buka Kartozia never practiced pediatric medicine, the profession for which he trained in Tbilisi, Georgia. He preferred to pursue the art of singing and composing music that mingles jazz with the ancient, harmonically rich and unpredictably wild polyphonic singing of his homeland, the former Soviet republic where Europe meets Asia.

Kartozia, now a producer at the Tbilisi Vaso Abashidze Music and Drama State Theatre, led a series of successful a cappella groups that sang across Europe and the United States. He lived for nearly a decade in New York before returning to Georgia in 2012 to take the cultural ministry gig. Among other things, he put together the Quintessential Five, a seamless and swinging quintet of teenagers that won the New York regional competition of the Harmony Sweepstakes A Cappella Festival and will sing for the gold Saturday night in San Rafael at the national finals of the 30th annual vocal competition.

"As soon as I got back to Georgia, I formed this group, because I always wanted to have a children's group that would sing these very difficult compositions," says Kartozia, 36, on the phone from Tbilisi, where it was 9 p.m. his time, 10 a.m. here.

All the kids he chose for this quintet - the twins Salome and Elene Dolidze, 13, Anna Doiashvili, 15, Papuna Sharikadze, 16, and 17-year-old Giorgi Toradze - had been winners on the national TV talent show "Ana Bana" (the Georgian way of saying ABC). He'd checked them out individually on YouTube, then asked the show's producer, a friend, to get them together.

"I asked them to sing some chords, and the balance was right there at once," says Kartozia, who notes that Georgia is considered the birthplace of polyphonic singing. "Georgian folk songs are very sophisticated - harmonically and rhythmically - and sometimes really wild. Sometimes if you don't know the piece, you would never predict what happens next."

The quintet's repertoire stretches from "Almost Like Being in Love" from the Lerner & Loewe musical "Brigadoon" to contemporary numbers rooted in traditional Gregorian folk music, one of them riffing on the local yodeling style called krimanchuli.

"I particularly like to work in the direction of ethnic fusion. But the more jazzy arrangements are done by Papuna," says Kartozia, referring to the group's bass singer, who's also a jazz piano prodigy. He hands the kid the phone.

"I mostly listened to Georgian pop music until I got into jazz when I was 13," says Sharikadze, who goes to public school and attends Tbilisi's central music academy. He feasted on the pianism of Oscar Peterson before falling for Bill Evans. Keith Jarrett is currently his main man.

"I can't imagine how anybody can sound like him," says the young musician, who started singing American standards last year, was knocked out by New York and is hot to sing here. He dreams of having an international career as a pianist and singer. He's already well known in Georgia, where he grew up in the post-Soviet era, unlike Kartozia.

"All those wars and radical changes were happening in front of my eyes," Kartozia says. "We lived in fear for years." Asked how things are going in his country these days, he replies: "Not bad. At least better than in Ukraine."

Fundraising performances

Meridian Gallery, the worthy San Francisco nonprofit art and music organization that came close to being evicted from its home in the historic Perine Mansion on Powell Street just above Union Square, is putting on a series of fundraising lectures and performances next month to help bring in cash to secure a long-term lease.

The veteran bop vocalist Kitty Margolis plays a Meridian 25th anniversary gala there June 28, capping a string of programs that include Latin percussionist John Santos' group June 5; JD Beltran speaking June 19 on the subject of "Designing Change: Art & Tech in San Francisco"; and performances by Bob Marsh, Andrea Williams, the Cornelius Cardew Choir, Phillip Greenlief& Jon Raskin and others on a "Meridian Music: Composers in Performance" bill on June 26.

Mutants, live

The Klaxon Mutant Allstars, an eclectic Bay Area crew led by trumpeter-composer Henry Hung and drummer Eric Garland that cooks up a mash of indie rock, electronica and jazz, celebrates the release of its new recording, "Robot Invasion," next Thursday at Duende in Oakland. The band features Kasey Knudsen playing saxophone and loop switcher, Colin Hogan on keyboards and melodica, and Georges Ban-Weiss on bass.

The Wong & Perloff show

American Conservatory Theater Artistic Director Carey Perloff, who directs Tony Award-winning actor BD Wong and others next month in the U.S. premiere of James Fenton's adaptation of the ancient Chinese tale "The Orphan of Zhao," will toss the ball around with Wong in a conversation about the play Monday evening at the Geary Theater. The Commonwealth Club is co-producing the chat and the La Jolla Playhouse is co-producing the play.

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